La Renaissance: Flanders and the Netherlands

Debate continues as to whether the concept of the Renaissance considered
valid for Italy may be properly applied to the art of northern Europe prior
to the year 1500.

Fifteenth-century northern artists did not intensively cultivate classical
sources, nor did they show the predilection for abstract and theoretical
systems of representation that characterized Italian art. Nonetheless, the
radical transformation of northern artistic traditions that took place during
the 15th and 16th centuries, although by no means parallel to Italian
developments, can be appropriately described as a Renaissance.

Jan van EYCK,
the supreme master of the Netherlandish school, is
recognized as having been the first to exploit the full potential of the new
medium of oil painting. In his masterwork, the Ghent Altarpiece (1432;
Church of Saint Bavo, Ghent), and in portraits such as the wedding portrait
of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife (1534; National Gallery, London), this
technique is used with the utmost refinement to render minute detail,
delicate textures, and the luminous effects of light.

The enigmatic
Master of Flémalle
made an equally
important contribution to the vivid, miniaturizing realism of Netherlandish
painting. In his two most famous works, the Dijon Nativity (c.1420; Musee
des Beaux-Arts, Dijon) and the Merode Altarpiece (c.1426; The Cloisters, New
York City), the Master of Flémalle, like van Eyck, combined his direct, fresh
observation of nature with elaborate symbolic structures that lend a
profound dimension to mundane objects within his religious scenes.

Rogier van der Weyden,
famous for portraits and
altarpieces
such as the
Descent from the Cross (1439-43; Prado, Madrid), worked in a more idealistic
vein, instilling his compositions with unprecedented monumentality and
emotional intensity. With the rising importance of new schools of painting
in the cities of Brussels, Louvain, and Haarlem, which came to rival that of
Bruges, painting continued to flourish in the Netherlands during the mid-
and late 15th century. Van der Weyden, an intriguing and idiosyncratic
genius, exercised a dominant influence on many later figures including
Dirk Bouts.
Other notable artists were the short-lived painter GEERTGEN TOT SINT
JANS, who specialized in tender, nocturnal scenes that demonstrate a superb
feeling for light effects;
Hans Memling,
whose style is characterized by a
languid, delicate air; and
Gerard David,
whose works were more severe and
monumental in quality.

The hallucinatory paintings of the Flemish
Hieronymus Bosch
seem out of
place in a period when artists were intent on portraying the beauty and
nobility of humankind. More in keeping with the Renaissance spirit are the
works of
Hugo van der Goes,
who was active in Ghent and Bruges. His
Portinari Altarpiece (1474-76; Uffizi Gallery, Florence) is a work of crucial
importance. Executed for the Florentine church of San Egidio, it introduced
Italian artists to the earthy and lively realism of Neatherlandish oil
painting technique.